Hodgson Russ, Sunvestment on solar siting in Adirondacks “New York is a tale of two systems”

New York's Adirondack Park is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous U.S., encompassing about six million acres. The Park, whose Forest Preserve is protected under the state constitution's "Forever Wild" clause, boasts more than 3,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, 42 peaks over 4,000 feet, and a wide variety of habitats, including unique wetlands and old growth forests. 

The Park has seen a major push for clean energy development in recent years, and is already home to solar farms and hydropower facilities.

But the area remains an uneasy patchwork of state-owned and privately-held land, which lies at the center of ongoing controversies about how to preserve the wilderness aspects of the Park while accommodating competing interests represented by environmentalists, property owners, developers and locals. 

Besides the challenges presented by state and local statutes and communities, developers must also pass muster with the Adirondack Park Agency, which has its own set of approval processes. Still, the area is seen as holding much promise for renewable energy development and a critical vehicle through which the state’s ambitious Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) can be achieved.

The CLCPA calls for an 85 percent reduction in GHG emissions by 2050, 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040 and 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. The state also hopes to develop 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, 3,000 MW of energy storage by 2030, and 6,000 MW of solar by 2025.

“There are a number of subgoals that the legislation set out, and what happens is the Public Service Commission (PSC) as the regulator of the utilities has to issue all the rules and all the ways the state mechanically can get there,” said Noah Shaw, partner and co-chair, Renewable Energy Practice, Hodgson Russ, at a recent roundtable discussion. “It gets pretty wonky sometimes, but last week the PSC took what I would say is the most significant step so far in implementing the CLCPA by adopting the 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 standards and specifying the number of RECs that actually have to be purchased in the state by NYSERDA in order to hit that goal.”

The PSC's expansion of the state's landmark Clean Energy Standard (CES) includes a new Tier 4 large-scale renewable program to specifically value environmental attributes associated with renewable energy delivered into New York City.

“Basically what it does is provide an incentive for renewable electricity to plug directly into New York City,” Shaw said. “What that means is upstate wind and solar. But also importantly, Canadian hydro--under very specific circumstances in terms of eligibility--can now sell their electricity through new transmission plugged directly into New York City and have a separate compensation structure that will actually value that. Because what we see is that New York State’s energy system is a tale of two systems. The upstate system is very clean already; it’s mostly nuclear, wind and hydro. The downstate system, however, is extraordinarily dirty. So how do we balance that and get the clean electrons south? That is the big question for state policymakers to tackle, and that's what Tier 4 intends to do.”

The PSC also approved a competitive five-year Tier 2 program to preserve existing renewable baseline generation to support the state’s "70 by 30" renewables goal.

“There have been requests by older generation units--hydro and wind in particular--to continue to be supported by the state, the idea being that if the state doesn’t continue to support them they’re just going to sell their RECs elsewhere, into New England most likely, and then the state loses the benefit of that generation,” Shaw said. “So the PSC authorized a program to support those facilities for a few years. Those generators didn't get everything they wanted. I think even the order called it a “stop gap" solution, so there are more chapters to be written in that regard. But the state is, frankly, doing more than it has in the past to support some of the legacy resources so they don't start selling those resources elsewhere.”

Conrad Karsten, project developer at Sunvestment Energy Group, said the company has been trying to site solar projects in the Adirondacks for five years.

The company’s Saranac Lake Community Solar array, a 2 MW ground-mounted solar project located on 10 acres, is currently under construction and on track to be fully operational by late 2020.

“In many ways, the Saranac Community Solar project was a needle in a haystack in that it’s located in a hamlet, which is the most developer friendly of the development sites in the Park,” Karsten said. “The Adirondack Park Agency takes its job very seriously to keep the Park forever wild. We found that they were extremely collaborative, and from the start they kind of helped us avoid the pitfalls of developing in the Park. The challenge for us as developers was to keep the design somewhat fluid so we could keep compliance.”

The company was also able to find a motivated landowner looking to host a community solar project.

“His vision for the project, which by extension became our vision, was that this was a local project,” Karsten said. “If it’s owned locally, it’s going to be subscribed locally. Benefits of the project in every sense--tax benefits, local job creation, savings, environmental benefits--would all stay within the community. As to whether that is a replicable model in New York, I am not so sure. But I certainly hope it is.”

Shaw noted that while responsible renewable energy siting presents a challenge in any location, developers can find success in the region through commonsense decision making and community engagement. 

“In the Adirondacks, that obviously is an extraordinarily important piece of the equation,” he said. “The needle to thread here is just extraordinarily important because it’s going to set a precedent for future projects that come down the line. I think the first thing to do is finding sites that make sense. It's six million acres, folks. It’s as big as the state of Vermont. There are places around Ticonderoga on the outskirts of the Park where siting can make sense and, frankly, those locations are most often best situated when it comes to interconnecting into transmission systems. For a lot of reasons it really makes sense for the developers to look hard and use common sense about where they want to put a project which will garner community support, which is really important, and make their permitting processes more efficient. The state is supportive, but the Adirondack Park is a different animal when it comes to building anything, and solar will be no exception.”